‘The Bay and the Ocean’: A History of the ANC in Swaziland, 1960–1979

Abstract

South African political refugees first began arriving in Swaziland in significant numbers in the late 1950s. In the mid-1960s the ANC tried to recruit these refugees to engage in operational activities but with little success. After Swazi independence in 1968 the kingdom's rulers were too scared of South African retaliation to provide active support for the ANC's armed struggle. Meanwhile ANC members in Swaziland were cut off from ANC structures in central Africa because the kingdom was landlocked between white-ruled South Africa and Mozambique. This changed following the army coup in Lisbon in 1974 which led to Mozambican independence. Mozambique's provisional government allowed the ANC access to Swaziland. The ANC sent Thabo Mbeki to try and establish links with activists in South Africa, but whilst he made some progress, this was reversed by police countermeasures early in 1976. A rump of activists left behind after Mbeki's expulsion led ANC efforts to handle the exodus of youths into Swaziland after the June 1976 Soweto uprising. In the late 1970s Swaziland formed part of what the ANC referred to as the ‘Eastern Front’ of its liberation struggle. In trying to stop ANC infiltrations South Africa made use of an extensive network of highly-placed agents in the Swazi establishment. However this collaboration proved ineffective in stopping the ANC because, even if it wished to, Swaziland lacked the resources to prevent its territory being used, whilst there were also many prominent Swazis, including King Sobhuza II, whose sympathies lay with the ANC. By the end of the 1970s ANC activity in Swaziland had grown to such a scale that it began to unnerve the Swazi authorities. This set the stage for the closing of the ‘Eastern Front’ in the early 1980s.     

Becoming the ‘party of civil rights’: the Radical Party, 1962–1979

ABSTRACT

The article reconstructs how the Italian Radical Party became, from the mid-1960s, the party of ‘civil rights’, and what its main battles for these rights were between 1967 and 1979. In the Italian political system the Party played a crucial role in the process of re-institutionalization that took place in the 1970s, helping to transfer demands formulated in social and cultural terms since the 1960s to the legislative-institutional level. Making the battle for civil rights the object of their own political action had a systemic meaning for the Radicals – namely, to undermine the dominion of the Christian Democrats and redefine the relations between the political sphere and society. This was closely linked to the political strategy of the party and to the organizational form it gave itself from 1967 onwards. These aspects, however, did not remain unchanged between 1967 and 1979; rather, they fed on the Radicals’ evolving vision of Italian society (on its social turmoil) on the one hand, and on the other they reacted to the evolution of the Italian political scenario, in particular to the possibility of building a parliamentary alternative to the Christian Democracy.     

Printing and Publishing in Greece: ‘flexibility’ and the process of innovation, 1979–1991

Abstract

Since the mid-1960s a large number of innovations has affected printing and publishing throughout the world. At the heart of what is now widely acknowledged as a technological revolution was the switch to photo-composition and offset lithography from ‘hot-metal’ techniques. Two principal developments may be identified-the shift from molten metal to photography pioneered in the USA, and the introduction of electronic-based processes of production and transmission (Moran, 1974: 147–261,309–19; Clair, 1976; Marshall, 1983; Guy and Haywood, 1985). The early photo-setters were costly and were restricted to a relatively small number of sizes and typefaces. Origination remained fragmented and still had to be divided-up into a series of distinct tasks notably keyboarding, photo-typesetting, page paste-up, photographic work and fmal plate-making. Because of this constraint the take-up of electronic typesetting, particularly in small and medium-size printing firms, was slow. However, the arrival of micro-electronic chips paved the way for cheaper and more dependable photo-typesetting systems. Digitalisation of information enables a unification of the origination process and allows an author to prepare high quality graphics and sophisticated art work.     

Containing Violence in El Salvador: Community Organization,Transnational Networks and State–Society Relations

Extant research has analysed the impact of security policies, truces and informal agreements on both the dynamics and traits of organized violence in El Salvador. However, less is understood about variation in the levels of lethal violence across subnational units. This article contributes to filling this gap. Based on a case study of the municipality of Chalatenango, the analysis shows that community organization and translocal dynamics are crucial to explaining violence containment. Local communities have managed to control the levels of lethal violence and deter criminal actors amid a national context characterized by state neglect and chronic violence. Community organization is not territorially bound but extends across transnational networks. Migrants are a source of livelihoods for the local population; they also contribute to providing public goods and participate in local forms of organization. Transnational networks have forged a migration corridor that enables immigration to the United States. In addition, community organization informally contributes to the capacity of the local state to perform its functions, thereby shaping cooperative state–society relations. This analysis sheds new light on the conditions shaping the variation in levels of violence at the subnational level and local governance dynamics.     

‘Forewarned Is Forearmed’: Intelligence,Japan's Siberian Intervention,and the Washington Conference

This article details the intelligence-gathering role of US railroad experts stationed in Siberia and Manchuria from 1917 to 1922. Beginning in April 1920, US railway officials began receiving intercepted correspondence between Japanese officials, passed to them from Japan's military headquarters in Harbin via a former Czechoslovak soldier. The intelligence shows that US officials were aware of highly detailed planning by Japanese expansionists. Whether or not US officials were completely cognisant of the intelligence's significance, these sources provide insight into why US diplomacy helped provide leverage to the moderates within Japan's government. In particular, the intercepted correspondence allows for a reinterpretation of Japanese Foreign Minister Uchida Yasuya's role during the Siberian expedition. This paper provides evidence that Uchida was not a moderate ally as scholars have traditionally claimed, but a key facilitator of Japan's military expansionists. It argues that the success of the Washington Conference, combined with the military's repeated failures to produce a victory in the Russian Far East, pressured Uchida into withdrawing his support for the expansionist programme. In addition to demonstrating the impact of the Washington Conference and the Siberian intervention on US–Japanese relations, this article helps explain Uchida's later re-emergence in the 1930s as a militarist sympathiser.     

‘Keeping a Line Open’: Britain and the 1979 Coup in Grenada

On 13 March 1979, the first unconstitutional change of power in the Eastern Caribbean occurred in Grenada, a member of the Commonwealth, when the radical New Jewel Movement overthrew Prime Minister Eric Gairy. This article examines the policy of the British government towards the new People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) during the first month of the ‘revolution’. It demonstrates that in contrast to the alarmist reactions of some of Grenada's neighbours, and the United States' intense concern about the PRG's pro-Cuban leanings, British policy was more optimistic and relaxed and designed to ‘keep a line open’ to Grenada.     

The environment and minor-party insurgency in Australian politics: the case of logging and the ‘liberals for forests’

It is known that many Liberal–National voters are environmentally conscious. However, the lack of importance of environmentalism in influencing voter behaviour in Australia, compared with socio-economic ideologies and issues, means that few Liberal–National identifiers are likely to find appeal in the parties which place most emphasis on protecting the natural environment, as these parties are generally Left-leaning with regard to socio-economic policy. Given the balance of influences on the vote, Liberal–National vulnerability on environmental issues would seem to be most exploitable by a Right-of-Centre environmental party. This article examines the case of the ‘liberals for forests’, a rare example of just such a party, which had some success in Western Australian State elections in 2001. The paper supports the notion that environmental issues, including those such as logging often linked with Left partisan ship, have the potential to influence vote choice, in a positive sense, on the Right as well as the Left of Australian politics. Implications for the Liberal Party and the party system are discussed.     

Warton,George Washington and the Lancashire Roots of the Anglo-American ‘Special Relationship’, C. 1880–1976

This article takes as its starting point the ancestral connection linking George Washington, first president of the United States, to the parish of Warton in north Lancashire. But rather than simply repeating the various details of this ancestry, this article considers instead the ways in which the Warton–Washington connection has been used within acts of ‘commemorative diplomacy’ — informal and often unofficial activities that deploy cultural memory in the interests of international relations. From the antiquarian endeavours of the 1880s, to the Washington-focused commemorations organized during the world wars, to the Bicentenary events of July 1976, places like Warton have long played a vital role in Anglo-American relations. Indeed, what Winston Churchill famously called the ‘special relationship’ has always been a carefully cultivated ‘myth’ as much as a political reality, and thus rooting it in specific places has been essential, ensuring it seems ‘organic’ rather than constructed, real rather than artificial, old and robust rather than new and superficial. Commemorative activities at Warton therefore offer an important perspective on twentieth-century Anglo-American relations, showing how a north Lancashire connection to the first president has provided an invaluable vector for defining, imagining and celebrating the transatlantic ties of the past and present.     

Travelling ‘Under Concern’: Quakers James Backhouse and George Washington Walker Tour the Antipodean Colonies, 1832–41

In 1832, British Quakers James Backhouse and George Washington Walker travelled ‘under concern’ on a trans-imperial journey that took nine years and spanned the Australian colonies of Van Diemen's Land, New South Wales and Swan River in Western Australia, Mauritius and South Africa's Cape Colony. Backhouse and Walker were fundamental to the creation and expansion of humanitarian networks in the antipodes, where they made major humanitarian interventions in matters concerning Aboriginal peoples, penal reform, slavery and education. This paper first traces the genesis and historical dimensions of their journey to contextualise it within a long transnational tradition of Quakers travelling ‘under concern’. The paper considers the tour through diverse interpretative approaches such as transnationalism and new work on transnational social movements, humanitarian travel writing and textuality, and argues that Backhouse and Walker were not imperial agents, nor were they agitators operating outside empire, but rather occupied a complex position as ‘institutional opponents’ working within imperial political circuits to broker various humanitarian reforms at multiple levels in the furtherance of their particular moral empire.     

The ‘Contest for Dominion’: Political Conflict and the Decline of the Lowther ‘Interest’ in Whitehaven, 1820–1900

Abstract

Wartime memories remain a strong undercurrent in British society but many of these myth/memories have been skewed by a strong southern-based perspective. One of the key requirements for the wartime population of Britain was that they carried on despite hardships and that morale was maintained. It has since entered the national consciousness that the people of Britain remained stoical throughout the war and that the community was strengthened by its shared wartime experiences. Recent historiography, however, has cast doubt on this belief, citing examples of putatively poor behaviour during the war. This article seeks to explore this myth/memory and, in a small way, to redress the North–South balance by using the experiences of wartime Tyneside as a case study.     

‘Chilling’ and ‘hopping’ in the ‘teenage space network’: explorations in teenagers’ geographies in the city of Mechelen

Within the field of children's geographies several calls have been made to develop ‘teenagers’ geographies’ as a complementary field of research and practice. It has been stated that teenagers remain ‘invisible’ or ‘marginalised’ in public debates as well as in research and practice, even within childhood studies and children's geographies. Further explorations in teenagers’ geographies could contribute to the research on ‘diverse childhoods’. This article explores the spatial worlds of teenagers (approximately 12–16 years) in Flanders (Belgium), a region characterised by a dense network of smaller cities and ‘urban sprawl’. Based on street interviews and observations in a small city several mental maps and patterns of teenagers’ use of public space were identified. Starting from a case study in the city of Mechelen, this article suggests how these perspectives can be integrated into urban planning by identifying and tying together relevant planning layers, thus creating a more closely knit ‘teenage space network’. Wouter Vanderstede is an urban planner, anthropologist and historian. He is a researcher and staff member at Childhood & Society Research Centre–Onderzoekscentrum Kind & Samenleving vzw. Child friendly and teenager friendly planning and design of public space is one of the main research themes of the institute. View all notes     

Mapping the Niger, 1798–1832: Trust,Testimony and ‘Ocular Demonstration’ in the Late Enlightenment

This paper is about the role of trust, testimony and direct observation in the making of maps and about the ways in which these issues were apparent in the mapping of the Niger River. By the late eighteenth century, the Niger River was a two‐thousand‐year‐old geographical problem. Although classical writers, Arab geographers and French authorities had produced maps of the river, its direction of flow was not confirmed by direct observation until 1796 when the explorer Mungo Park did so. Yet Park solved only one part of the problem, and he died in 1805 while attempting to solve the remaining question: where did the river end? This question was not answered by direct observation until 1830. By then, however, the ‘Niger problem’ had been resolved, and the solution mapped, by two early nineteenth‐century geographers who had charted the river's course without travelling to Africa. Attention is also paid to the maps that first presented the Niger's termination on the basis of field observation. What all this evidence raises is the question of trust in others' testimony and the role of travel and direct observation in the production of maps as ‘truthful’ documents in the late Enlightenment.

Cet article concerne le rôle de la confiance, du témoignage et de l'observation directe dans l'établissement des cartes ainsi que la manière dont ces questions se manifestaient dans la cartographie du fleuve Niger. A la fin du XVIIIe siècle, le Niger était un problème géographique vieux de 2000 ans. Bien que les auteurs antiques, les géographes arabes et les autorités françaises aient produit des cartes de ce fleuve, la direction de son cours ne fut confirmée par l'observation directe qu'en 1796 grâce à l'explorateur Mungo Park. Encore Park ne résolut‐il qu'une partie du problème et mourut en 1805 alors qu'il tentait de résoudre la question restante: o[ugrave] le fleuve finissait‐il? On ne répondit à cette question par l'observation directe qu'en 1830. Dès lors, cependant, le ‘problème du Niger’ était résolu et sa solution cartographiée par deux géographes du début du XIXe siècle qui avaient dressé la carte du cours du fleuve sans voyager en Afrique. Nous prêtons également attention aux premières cartes qui ont montré le cours inférieur du Niger sur la base d'observation de terrain. Tout ceci met en évidence la question de la confiance dans le témoignage d'autrui et le rôle du voyage et de l'observation directe dans la production des cartes comme documents fidèles à la fin du siècle des Lumières.

Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Bedeutung von Vertrauen in vorliegende Informationen, die Rolle von Beweisen und von unmittelbarer Beobachtung bei der Kartenherstellung und damit, wie sich diese Aspekte in der Kartierung des Nigerflusses niederschlagen. Am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts war die Frage nach der geographischen Lage des Nigerflusses schon zweitausend Jahre alt. Auch wenn klassische Autoren, arabische Geographen und französische Autoritäten Karten des Flusses hergestellt hatten, so konnte seine Fließrichtung doch erst 1796 durch die persönliche Beobachtung des Entdeckers Mungo Park bestimmt werden. Allerdings löste Park nur den ersten Teil des Problems und starb 1805 bei der Suche nach dem Mündungsgebiet des Flusses. Diese Frage konnte nicht vor 1830 durch unmittelbare Beobachtung geklärt werden. Dann allerdings war das Niger‐Problem gelöst und das Ergebnis in Karten niedergelegt. Dies gelang zwei Geographen des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts, die den Verlauf des Niger zeichneten ohne nach Afrika zu reisen. Zusätzlich werden in diesem Beitrag die Karten behandelt, die später die Nigermündung erstmals auf der Grundlage von Feldarbeit darstellten. Was alle diese Zeugnisse nahelegen, ist die Frage nach dem Vertrauen in anderer Leute Aussagen und die Bedeutung von Reisen sowie von unmittelbarer Beobachtung bei der Herstellung von wirklichkeitsnahen Karten in der späten Aufklärung.

El artículo trata sobre el papel de la veracidad, del testimonio y del reconocimiento sobre el terreno en la construcción de mapas y sobre las vías en las que estas cuestiones fueron evidentes en los mapas del río Níger. Al final del siglo XVIII, el río Níger constituía un problema geográfico que se remontaba a 2000 años. Aunque los escritores clásicos, geógrafos árabes y autoridades francesas habían hecho mapas del río, la dirección de su corriente no fue confirmada hasta el reconocimiento del explorador Mungo Park en 1796. Pero Park resolvió sólo una parte del problema y murió en 1805 cuando trataba de resolver el resto, es decir, donde terminaba el río. Esta cuestión no fue resuelta por reconocimientos sobre el terreno hasta 1830. Sin embargo, para entonces ‘el problema del Níger’ había sido solucionado sobre un mapa por dos geógrafos de principios del siglo XIX que cartografiaron el curso del río sin viajar a África. Se señalan también los primeros mapas que presentaron el diseño completo del Níger, basados en observaciones sobre el terreno. Todas estas evidencias plantean la cuestión de la veracidad del testimonio de los otros y del papel del viaje y del reconocimiento sobre el terreno, en la producción de los mapas en tanto que documentos ‘verdaderos’ a finales del siglo XVIII.     

The strath report: britain confronts the H‐Bomb, 1954–1955

Late in 1954, the British government convened a secret committee of civil servants to explore the implications of the hydrogen bomb for Britain in a nuclear war. Headed by William Strath, this small and secret cadre of experts thought through the destruction that would follow a thermonuclear attack on the UK. This paper examines the recently declassified “Strath Report” and its ramifications. Drawing on intelligence assessments, technical analysis and economic predictions, its conclusions were profoundly pessimistic. Its portrayal of widespread devastation and the likely collapse of civil society shocked politicians and government officials, and led not only to massive revisions in the UK's plans for war but to official attempts to suppress public discussion of thermonuclear weapons and civil defence.     

The question of ‘the political’ in critical geopolitics: Querying the ‘child soldier’ in the ‘war on terror’

After two decades of scholarship on ‘critical geopolitics’, the question of whether it is largely a discursive critique of prevailing knowledge production and geopolitical texts or critique with an implicit, normative politics of its own remains open. These positions are not incommensurate, and much scholarship on critical geopolitics does both. This paper analyzes critical geopoliticians' concern with this question in the present historical moment and probes the possibility of a post-foundational ethic as the basis for ‘the political’ in critical geopolitics and beyond. Empirically, this paper explores these theoretical tensions within ‘critical geopolitics’ by tracing the disparate fates of two young men, both child soldiers at the time of their capture. ‘Child soldier’ is an unstable category subject to geopolitical valence and stigma during the ‘war on terror’. The deployment of extra-legal tactics and spaces of violence, such as those faced by detainees at Guantanamo Bay, point to the rise of biopolitics combined with geopolitics, illustrating the intersection of sovereignty and governmentality as important political fodder for critical geopolitics two decades after its inception. The stories of Canadian Omar Khadr, one of the youngest prisoners at Guantanamo and the only citizen of a Western state still held there, and Ismael Beah, a rehabilitated soldier who fought as a boy from Sierra Leone, illustrate too how geographical imagination strongly shapes access to provisions of international law and the victimized status of ‘child soldier’ in particular.     

New regionalism in Turkey: questioning the ‘new’ and the ‘regional’

Turkey’s regional policies are inspired by the new regionalism theory. During past two decades, key concepts of new regionalism, including knowledge economies, specialization, networked cities and innovation, have been incorporated in policy documents. At the same time, Turkey comes from a strong central state tradition that controls local and regional development. At first insight, new regionalism and strong central state control do not fit in the same frame. This research analyses the trajectory of regional policies in Turkey with the aim of explaining how these seemingly incompatible policies can coexist. It argues that regional policies developed at the central state level utilized new regionalism as a part of the strategy to maintain power in the course of transformation of the nation state.     

‘Anxious for peace’: the Provisional IRA in dialogue with the British government, 1972–75

This article looks at the backchannel dialogue that took place between the Provisional IRA and the British government from 1972 to 1975, a time when violence was at its peak. Interest in this notoriously murky subject has grown in recent years. Articles, several book-length narrative histories and a biography have covered its various aspects. But, using new archival and oral sources (including an exclusive interview with a member of the British 1975 talks-team), a narrative of the backchannels is presented before a new interpretation is given. Above all this study concludes that, behind its hard-line rhetoric and uncompromising violence, a significant element of the Provisional IRA was interested in, and actively explored, a political solution to the conflict within months of the start of the Troubles.     

‘Now’, ‘now’, ‘even now’: temporal deixis and the crisis of the present in some Northern Irish poems of the Troubles

The problem of how to describe and account for the present can be identified as a particular preoccupation of poets of the so-called Northern Irish renaissance. This article examines how the temporal deictic ‘now’ functions in some well-known poems by Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Derek Mahon. All three poets explore how to combine the plausibility of lyric derived from an individual consciousness with the authority of narrative derived from social interactions. This article will do three related things. First, it will argue that discussing ‘now’ as a temporal deictic enables us to appreciate the full ambiguity and complexity of some poems written at the height of the Northern Irish Troubles. Second, the article will argue that these poems reveal that ‘now’ actually functions in poetry more complexly than some theorists of deixis have allowed. Finally, the article will suggest newly fruitful ways of combining literary stylistics with more conventional close reading.     

Drawing,Etching, and Experiment in Christopher Wren’s Figure of the Brain

Abstract

Christopher Wren’s figure of the brain ‘viewed from below’ in Thomas Willis’s Cerebri anatome (1664) set a precedent, not only for subsequent images of the brain, but for scientific illustration. The image is the visual proof of a Baconian experiment conducted by the Oxford dissection team, in which dye was pumped into the carotid arteries of animal and human specimens in order to imitate the natural flow of blood, thereby applying William Harvey’s theory of circulation to the brain. Usually described as engravings, Wren’s images are in fact etchings (produced by the acid process), significant because etching for book illustration was then in its infancy in England. In addition to considering Wren as an experimental etcher, this article frames our understanding of Wren’s contributions to Willis’s project in terms of his virtuosic talents as amateur draughtsman, natural historian, anatomist, and his use of optical and draughting instruments.